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Angel Cake
Beat up to a stiff froth six egg whites; then gently mix in three-quarters of an ounce powdered sugar and one ounce sifted flour, then thoroughly mix for one minute; transfer it into a lightly buttered pan and bake in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Remove from the oven and let get cold. Cut the cake into six equal pieces and serve on a dish with a folded napkin.
A very short, very lean version of angel cake — closer to a French biscuit batter than the tall American cake the name usually calls to mind. The quantities as printed need thinking about before you turn the oven on.
- The quantities are almost certainly wrongThe printed quantities look very lean -- three-quarters of an ounce of sugar and one ounce of flour to six whites (roughly 6-7 oz of white) is far less than most angel cake recipes of the period, which use several ounces each of sugar and flour for that many whites. A figure dropped in setting the type is one possible explanation, but it is a guess; treat the printed amounts with caution.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. At that heat a shallow sheet of this batter would be set in about twenty minutes, while a deep tube pan of a full-sized angel cake would need considerably longer.
- Do not butter the panButtering the pan -- the instruction to butter suggests this is a flat, thin cake cut into portions rather than a tall one. A true angel cake is baked in an ungreased tube pan so the foam can grip the sides as it climbs, and it is cooled upside down for the same reason.
- Powdered sugarIn 1906 this generally meant finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match and dissolves into the whites without deflating them.
- Stabilising the whitesNo cream of tartar appears here, though it was already common in American angel cake recipes. A quarter teaspoon per six whites makes the foam markedly more forgiving during the folding.
- "Thoroughly mix for one minute"Read this as fold, not beat. A minute of genuine mixing after the flour goes in will knock the air out and give a flat, rubbery sheet; work in three additions with a spatula and stop when the streaks vanish.
- Cooling and cuttingThe cake must be fully cold before it is cut, as the crumb is fragile while warm. A long serrated knife used with a sawing motion, or a serrated bread knife, avoids compressing it.
- Yield and serviceSix pieces, as written. The folded napkin on the serving dish is a formal touch of the period.
Angel cake, or angel food cake, is an American invention of the later nineteenth century, generally traced to the spread of cheap refined white flour, fine sugar and — crucially — the rotary egg beater, which made whipping a dozen whites a matter of minutes rather than an arm-numbing chore. The name is usually explained by the whiteness and lightness of the crumb, often set against the dense, yolk-rich "devil's food" that followed it; that pairing is traditional rather than documented in any single source. Its appearance in a book called The International Cook Book is telling: by 1906 an American cake had become respectable enough to sit beside French and Italian entries, though the treatment here — thin, cut into portions, served on a folded napkin — is thoroughly continental in its manners, more biscuit than the towering tube-pan cake that Americans would come to expect.